


the gaze of the stars above

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Divination, Gen, Traditional Astrology, episode 124 coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29303529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: There are fractals of time scattered across the sky like words processing across a page, for those who are able to read them. Essek has always been very good at understanding time, so he looks to the stars for answers.But his god does not speak in words, and the answers he receives are, unfortunately, never as clear as he'd like.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	the gaze of the stars above

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote an entire [meta arguing why I think a form of astrology would be the most utilized form of divination in the Dynasty](https://essektheylyss.tumblr.com/post/642600380536078336) and all the while I was thinking about Essek knowing how to do it because he tried to learn it to disprove it and realized it was basically just patterns and cycles of history, so of course I was gonna write it.
> 
> Especially because he had a rough day. And he's probably gonna have some worse days very soon, lol.

It is well past midnight by the time he sets down his pen and parchment and settles back into his chair, letting out a deep exhale not for the first time in the last few hours, and certainly not for the last. 

_Breathe_. He does not know for certain whether Caleb Widogast’s words were a warning, a promise, or a threat—or a combination of the three, he thinks most likely—but he returns to them, hour after hour, and forces himself to acknowledge their suggestion, at least.

He is learning to let words ruminate. Understanding comes quickly to him with rote memorization and scientific study, putting together puzzle pieces and equations, but this… there is something innately missing from his comprehension of these kinds of words, words that are kind, that have, in their own way, his own well-being in mind. Not in any semblance of forgiveness but in a promise of an open door.

He removes his mantle, less caring of presenting his standing with this many asleep, and dons his cloak.

The hood slips easily over his head, obscuring most of his face, as he slips outside and into the cold night.

The sky is clear overhead, and he thanks the kindness of the gods even before the whip of a wind gust catches him, and he pulls the collar of his shirt up over his nose and ears, obscuring the lower half of his face. Still, as he whispers through the spires toward the open snow of the crater, and a guard, tucked into a crevice on watch, hisses, “ _Sir!_ ”

He glances over and waves a hand. “At ease, it’s alright. Nothing wrong, just taking a short walk.”

“Sir, it’s dangerous to venture—“

“I’m not going far,” he assures. “And it is an open tundra, is it not? I am perfectly capable of returning quickly to the safety of the outpost at a moment’s notice.”

The guard seems uncomfortable, but he slips out of the spires, toes half an inch off the snow.

Beyond the boundary of the outpost the wind is fierce indeed, but there’s nothing much to be done about it. The tug of gravity magic is enough to keep him aloft against it, and he passes over the snow until the spires are only as tall from his perspective as the mountains beyond them. The whole of the sky is laid out above, and more than ever it feels as though it is a dome encapsulating him and him alone. 

This kind of aloneness has always felt far more comforting than that of isolation in his towers, or even here in his own chambers. 

He tucks his knees toward his chest and gathers his spelled cloak around him, and then he lets himself fall back into the snow with little more than a whisper, his own grasp of gravity catching him before the slight impact sends up powder that might alert a hungry nocturnal thing wandering this area.

He has not been out to see the sky in a few weeks, and the stars have shifted of course, and he has to reorient their positions in his mind from those he is aware of in Rosohna. 

His mother had been thrilled to discover that, in his youth, Essek had taken an interest in divination, though he had not explained why he precociously spent several months pouring over books of heavenly movements and comparing them to history to prove that no god was guiding them from the stars. And he still has no proof otherwise, but there is a pattern to history, both of nations and of persons, too symmetrically cyclical to ignore, like the tessellated magic that he weaves between his fingers. Every time it sparks in perfect fractals from his palms, he can imagine how the Umavi could come to believe that the Luxon was a divine reflection of the sky.

Besides, he can affect his fate far better when he understands an inkling of what might be approaching. 

So he follows the stars, centers himself among them, and he looks for the constellations that his mother and other religious elders have used to portend the future, to determine what possibilities lie before them, which are most likely to coalesce before them.

He knows well what the stars suggest about him. One way or another, he is to be great. But the stars have such a different idea of greatness than any worldly individual, one of morals and doubts and questions. They do not make judgment calls as to what actions taken will write a name in history books.

And he looks to the stars again tonight, and he thinks of the star that he has been told rose at his birth. It is not visible at the moment, but he can place where it lies in the quadrants of the sky in his mind’s eye.

This time of year, it is rising with the dawn, only a week away from meeting the path of Exandria’s own star.

A great victory and a rebirth, it means, when one’s natal star kisses the rising sun, but rebirth means so many things to him and his people.

Nowhere in the sky does he find either moon, and he does quick calculations, imagining their paths and the last time he saw them. But he knows, because he looked over these omens before he left Rosohna. He knows that Ruidis, slow-moving, will rise with the sun for the next three weeks, and Catha is three phases behind it—that both of them, and his star too, will join with the morning light at once. Though this rising occurs every year, it is these omens that give him pause—it is a stronger omen than most.

He wonders if his mother has noticed these things—he knows she looks, on occasion, on behalf of him and his brother. 

He knows these are the conditions in the sky under which his father died.

And yet these are not terrible omens—only ones that portend greatness. Rebirth.

He is tired of greatness. It has only ever led him astray.

And yet he feels as though in the previous weeks he has been unmade and crafted again by a force beyond his control and yet inside his very soul, and he has no way to tell if this is the rebirth of which this omen speaks or if more is yet to come.

Ahead of battle, in a reading for a nation, this sign would mean victory, but it does not necessarily mean everyone comes out alive. No victory is unmuddied by blood, in his experience, and no rebirth comes without losing something of oneself, even if it is found again far down the line. You will return to it changed, and it may not even spark recognition in your eyes.

He wonders if his father will recognize him, when he returns from the grave changed, or if that memory will not have reseated itself by that time.

He wonders if he will live to see his father return at all.

All of these questions wax and wane as he remains lying in the snow. His cloak is spelled against water but it can only hold it at bay for so long, and he stands when the dampness begins to creep in, bringing the chill with it. The wind, which had skimmed over him where he was partially submerged, renews its onslaught against his skin.

The eyes of the fiery stars follow him from their heavenly thrones as he returns to the base on foot, and he wishes they, like the pantheon that others turn to for guidance, would reach out to reassure him, but they only blink at him as they watch with stares as cold as this frozen landscape, too distant to lend their warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!!


End file.
